Motor Mouth: The inconvenient truth about banning gas engines

2016 Chevrolet Volt.

Graeme Fletcher, Driving

Extended-range EVs with on-board gas generators are an immediate and real-world solution to emissions

by
David Booth | September 29, 2017

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France and England have banned internal combustion engines. Oh, the consequences are still a long way off — ink still fresh, the decrees won’t take effect for 23 years — but, in the few short months since Paris and London started this trend, there’s been an avalanche of anti-ICE (internal combustion engine) legislation: Germany (home to the diesel scandal that empowered these bans) is contemplating similar proscriptions. So is Scotland. Even China, home to roughly 47 per cent of the world’s coal use, wants to at least appear environmentally friendly and is contemplating identical restrictions. No one is talking about such blanket bans in North America yet, but the pendulum has swung and my 40-year-old engineering curriculum reminds that momentum, once initiated, is an energy not easily subdued.

What will be the effect of such bans?

Well, for one, as EV advocates claim, emissions (of the tailpipe variety at least) will be completely eliminated. Even accounting for the fact that the world’s two largest auto markets — China and the United States — are far too dependent on dirty coal to be truly green, automobile pollution will be, as trumpeted, reduced.

The downside — besides range anxiety and long refueling times — will be cost. Since the dawn of the modern electric vehicle, EV advocates have contended that our liberation from fossil fuel will only come when we totally overhaul our infrastructure; if not an EV charging station to replace every single gas pump, then at least a goodly portion of them so that no one is stranded, sans free electrons, by the side of the highway.

The sheer number of recharging stations required to service 300 million EVs — if, as electric evangelicals protest, the battery-powered car is to completely replace the North American ICE fleet — boggles the mind. The most singular problem will surely be the roadside stations on our highways and urban arterial roads. For instance, if it takes a 16-pump rest stop to refuel current weekend traffic on Ontario’s 401, imagine what the service station of the future will look like when it takes 10 or 20 times longer to recharge every electric car. I tried to calculate (see next week’s Motor Mouth) what all this might cost, but my calculator ran out of zeroes. Billions won’t even begin to cover it. Nevertheless, we are told that such is the inevitable and unavoidable cost of saving our planet.

But, is it really?

What if there was a way to eliminate three-quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted by the cars we drive without uprooting our current infrastructure? Without having to mortgage our future on infrastructure changes? And, if further incentive is required, what if this cost-effective emissions reduction was accompanied by the same quick, easy refueling we have come to expect from our gasoline-fueled cars?

How, you ask?

Simple. Don’t, as those feckless Continentals have, completely ban internal combustion engines. Instead, just ban them in major urban centres. Don’t specifically mandate electric vehicles. Instead, allow extended-range alternatives; you know, like the Chevrolet Volt. But, to enforce maximum emissions reduction, make it illegal to use their range-extending gasoline-fueled motors within city limits.

The effect would be extraordinary, especially in light of recent driving patterns. For instance, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Americans drove 3,164.4 billion miles last year (that’s roughly six million round trips to the moon, by the way). Roughly 70 per cent of those miles — 2,214.5 billion — were urban, less than a third — 949.8 billion — driven on rural interstates and arterial roads. And that trend is growing. In fact, Michael Sivak, of the University of Michigan’s Sustainable Worldwide Transportation laboratory, says that, while the rural miles driven decreased by 12 per cent between 2000 and 2016, urban miles increased by some 33 per cent. In other words, the vast preponderance of the miles we drive are spent slogging through crowded streets and traffic jams.

This is exactly where electricity shines and internal combustion doesn’t. In fact, that 70 per cent breakdown of mileage doesn’t quite capture all the CO2 that would be eliminated if all our urban miles were electric. Piston engines, as every non-hybrid car owner can attest, consume more fuel per mile in the city than they do the highway. Factor that in — I chose Toyota’s Camry and Ford’s 2.7-litre F-150 as representative examples of the North American fleet — and more than 75 per cent of all automotive-related fossil fuels are consumed on urban interstates or arterial roads.

Imagine then, if, instead of forcing battery-powered electric vehicles down the public’s throat (and that’s what those British and French mandates are effectively doing) we allow extended-range EVs as well — again with the proviso they are not allowed to use their ICE within city limits. It’s a win-win situation. Environmentalists get to proclaim the (partial) ban of the internal combustion engine and their much sought-after hobbling of Big Oil. Consumers get the economy and convenience of recharging their cars at home married with the quick refueling of a traditional gasoline engine when they’re on the road. Instead of trying to figure out how to cram 100 kilowatt-hours — or more — of lithium-ion into our cars (at $150 or more per kW-hr), owners in smaller metropolitan areas could make do with 20 kW-hr. Even those in our biggest cities — Los Angeles, Toronto and Vancouver — could probably get by with just 40 or 50 kW-hr.

Indeed, it would seem hard to argue with a 75 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions with little or no cost, especially in light of recent news from Nature Geoscience that, as skeptics have long been saying, climate change may be real, but predictions of a catastrophic temperature rise have proven unduly dire. Saving our planet may not require the complete conversion to electric vehicles advocates have demanded, even if extremists continue to trumpet their doomsday predictions.

In the end, while completely banning internal combustion engines make great politics, it makes for bad policy. Converting our entire fleet to extended range electric vehicles instead of purely battery-powered EVs would cut most of our tailpipe emissions and not cost us a damn dime in refueling infrastructure. An inconvenient truth may have started this crusade against the automobile, but it will take a rational plan to solve it.